Submitted by the Williams Lake Film Club
The Williams Lake Film Club is thrilled to screen The Teachers’ Lounge, at the Paradise Cinemas on Thursday March 14 at 7 p.m.
Directed by Ilker Çatak, it’s currently nominated for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards, and it has already taken home five of the top prizes at the German Film Awards (including Best Feature Film and Best Leading Actress).
As children and teenagers, most of us were probably never privy to what transpired behind the closed doors of the teachers’ lounge at our schools.
We might have imagined it entailed coffee consumption, some grading, maybe some chitchat about weekend plans and students amongst teachers. Innocuous stuff and not the setting you might expect for a riveting drama.
Polish émigré Carla Nowak, a dedicated and idealist young instructor, teaches mathematics and physical education at a German middle school.
We quickly learn there have been a series of petty thefts at the school, which have been setting both faculty and students on edge.
Questionable means have been taken to get to the bottom of the pilfering by Ms. Novak’s peers, including coercing students to show their wallets, and pressuring students into implicating their classmates.
When a Muslim student in Ms. Novak’s class is targeted by the administration as the culprit, in an effort to defend her student and prove her allyship, she takes matters into her own hands by covertly leaving her laptop running in the teachers’ lounge, with her wallet close-by as bait.
This action, and Carla’s decisions thereafter, set forth a calamitous chain of events that shakes her to her core, and turns the school into an ethical war zone. And that is as much of the plot as we will give away before you can see it yourself.
Smartly and precisely, Çatak uses the microcosm of a school environment to explore a larger myriad of societal themes including morality, bias, collective responsibility, xenophobia, and misinformation in the era of social media.
The film works as a deftly constructed parable. Never leaving the confines of the middle school, we perceive things through the eyes of Ms. Novak, in a stunning performance by Leonie Benesch.
The entire supporting cast is excellent. Filmed in a 4:3 ratio, the tight borders emphasize the turmoil, isolation and ethical morass Ms. Novak finds herself in.
Berlin-born Çatak, who is of Turkish descent, wrote the script along with friend (and former classmate) Johannes Duncker. The score by Marvin Miller emphasizes the building tension perfectly.
Ilker Çatak has deftly transformed a small slice-of-life drama set in a German middle school into an edge-of-the-seat thriller that will have you guessing until the final scene, and thinking much longer afterward about the deeper issues it probes.
As film reviewer Matt Zoller Seitz notes, after seeing The Teachers’ Lounge: “you’ll come away knowing that you’ve seen a proper movie, with its own theme and distinct aesthetic and strong personality, not just another piece of ‘flavourless’ content.Çatak and co-writer Johannes Duncker have tapped into a largely unexplored subcategory of the thriller, one with unlimited potential to illuminate everyday life” (RogerEbert.com 2023). In a nutshell - don’t miss it!
“The Teachers’ Lounge” is screening at the Paradise Cinemas on Thursday March 14. Rated PG. Tickets are $10. Advance tickets for sale at The Open Book and tickets will be sold in the cinema lobby prior to the screening. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the show starts at 7 p.m.
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